GreenPrint Donates Software to Government for Oil Spill Aid

GreenPrint Technologies has offered to donate free licenses of its printing software to every single federal employee to aid oil spill recovery. GreenPrint software analyzes your file before you print it, and offers to remove pages that seem to be just waste, like the pages that only contain ads, URLs, or legalese. Not printing those texts, images, and pages saves money--money that GreenPrint suggests could be used to create a trust for states affected by the oil spill.

GreenPrint Technologies has offered to donate free licenses of its printing software to all federal employees to aid oil spill recovery. GreenPrint software analyzes files before printing, and offers to remove pages and images that seem to be just waste. Not printing banner ads, legalese, and mostly blank pages saves money--money that GreenPrint suggests could be used to create a trust for states affected by the BP oil spill.

A 2009 Government Printing Report by Lexmark International said that government printing costs $1.3 billion per year, of which $440 million is waste (that seems like a lot of waste, proportionally, but even if it were a quarter of that--$110 million--it would still be a lot of money). GreenPrint says that the government's savings could be worth $200 to $440 million per year, and since the licenses don't expire, that could quickly add up to a billion or more for the environment.

PR stunt or good idea? Who says it can't be both? And the software also works on the small scale: according to GreenPrint, their company saves the average home user over $75 and 1,300 pages per year. You can download a free version of the software at their website.